NASA has announced its very first crewed flight by a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station is scheduled for June next year.

NASA has announced its very first crewed flight by a SpaceX rocket (Image: GETTY)

The mission will be the very first manned US launch to the orbiting station since the space shuttle programme was scrapped seven years ago, which had forced American astronauts to travel to the Solar System and back on the eye-wateringly expensive Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The timetable for the mission, and a flight on a Boeing spacecraft to follow in August, was ditched several times in the run-up to the announcement.

But NASA has now agreed to provide monthly updates on deadlines.

Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters, said: “This new process for reporting our schedule is better; nevertheless, launch dates will still have some uncertainty, and we anticipate they may change as we get closer to launch.

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“These are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems will be ready to fly.”

The missions will be conducted as tests, despite the two astronauts in each flight spending two weeks in the space station before returning back to Earth, but afterwards, Nasa will use SpaceX for longer missions that could last around six months at a time.

SpaceX will carry out an uncrewed test in January, with Boeing doing the same in March.

For the SpaceX mission, the Falcon 9 rocket will be used for the launch with a Crew Dragon capsule attached to the top.